A wholesome but lightweight story of a girl navigating a new environment.
Ten-year-old Fernsnickle Hooves arrives at her new “Home-School-Away-from-Home” in Miami and makes new friends at camp in Depner’s follow-up to The Everyday Adventures of Fernsnickle Hooves (2021).
Mrs. Peabody, the owner of the academy known as Oasis, gives newcomer Fernsnickle a tour of her sprawling new home and school after the girl arrives by train. Over cucumber and watercress sandwiches, Mrs. Peabody reveals that Fernsnickle’s recently deceased Grandma Rose was a domestic servant for the Peabodys after dropping out of school at age 16. (Whenever Fernsnickle is surprised at some good fortune, she remembers Grandma Rose, who used to say “you just NEVER know!”) The next morning, Fernsnickle meets fellow student Alison Peabody, who’s distantly related to Mrs. Peabody, and Capt. Whit, who takes the girls by boat to an island called Camp Colorado, located just off the Florida Keys. She gets annoyed by Alison’s quirks, and they inspire a deeply flawed idea for an entry in the Science Fiction Science Fair, which rewards imagination more than scientific know-how. Fernsnickle finds that the girls’ education is focused on studying their interests, creative projects, reading, and field trips. She starts the Girls Working Together for a Better World Club with her new friends, and they all enter a Talent Show, which sets up the third book in the series. Over the course of the book, Depner is adept at weaving in discussions of social issues; for example, Fernsnickle is quite forthright on educating others on the downsides of smoking, and there’s even a brief financial literacy lesson on saving and investing. She also visits shelters for people without homes, but the book might have been improved by more detailed and emotional observations about those living there. Overall, the book is fun and fast-paced. However, despite its complex plot, it suffers from a general lack of depth. The problems involving the Science Fiction Science Fair are resolved too quickly, for example, and aside from Alison, readers don’t really get to know any of the other girls at Oasis.
A wholesome but lightweight story of a girl navigating a new environment.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2022
ISBN: 979-8481318257
Page Count: 149
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.
In Florence’s middle-grade fantasy novel, a young girl’s heart is tested in the face of an evil, spreading Darkness.
Eleven-year-old Lydia, “freckle-cheeked and round-eyed, with hair the color of pine bark and fair skin,” is struggling with the knowledge that she has reached the age to apprentice as an herbalist. Lydia is reluctant to leave her beloved, magical Mulberry Glen and her cozy Housetree in the woods—she’ll miss Garder, the Glen’s respected philosopher; her fairy guardian Pit; her human friend Livy; and even the mischievous part-elf, part-imp, part-human twins Zale and Zamilla. But the twins go missing after hearing of a soul-sapping Darkness that has swallowed a forest and is creeping into minds and engulfing entire towns. They have secretly left to find a rare fruit that, it is said, will stop the Darkness if thrown into the heart of the mountain that rises out of the lethal forest. Lydia follows, determined to find the twins before they, too, fall victim to the Darkness. During her journey, accompanied by new friends, she gradually realizes that she herself has a dangerous role to play in the quest to stop the Darkness. In this well-crafted fantasy, Florence skillfully equates the physical manifestation of Darkness with the feelings of insecurity and powerlessness that Lydia first struggles with when thinking of leaving the Glen. Such negative thoughts grow more intrusive the closer she and her friends come to the Darkness—and to Lydia’s ultimate, powerfully rendered test of character, which leads to a satisfyingly realistic, not quite happily-ever-after ending. Highlights include a delightfully haunting, reality-shifting library and a deft sprinkling of Latin throughout the text; Pit’s pet name for Lydia is mea flosculus (“my little flower”). Fine-lined ink drawings introducing each chapter add a pleasing visual element to this well-grounded fairy tale.
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781956393095
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Waxwing Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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